Broadway Theatre Archive

On a Connecticut farm, James Mayo's two sons both love Ruth Atkins. Robert, the younger son, is sickly and dreams of escaping to a romantic life somewhere "beyond the horizon." Andy is hard-working and steadfast and loves his brother deeply. When Ruth reveals that she loves Robert and not, as everyone believed, Andy, Robert's plans to go to sea with his uncle are disrupted. He decides to stay at home and marry Ruth, while Andy, unwilling to remain close at hand as his brother marries the girl he loves, takes Robert's place on the voyage. This turn of events leads to heartache and tragedy for everyone involved.

Tandy, Merideth and assorted others unexpectedly wake up in a steambath with no easy exit. After spending some time there, it becomes clear that the steambath is a sort of Afterlife, where indifferent souls come to tell their stories to God who happens to be the attendant picking up the towels.

A rehearsal is disrupted when six figures mysteriously appear on the stage, claiming to be fictional characters from an unfinished play searching for an author to tell their tragic story. An adaptation of the classic Luigi Pirandello play, updated to take place in a 1970s television studio.

Truck driver Johnny Horton and cigarette girl Eadie elope after a hasty romance, but after the wedding, the couple realizes they don't know each other very well. Soon Johnny's overbearing mother becomes the third wheel in their marriage, threatening its fragile existence.

An aging Southern belle's preoccupation with her past and her dreams for her children's futures threaten to smother her painfully shy daughter and her aspiring writer son.

Anton Chekhov's play "The Seagull" is brought to life in this acclaimed 1975 production directed by John Desmond. Seeking to reform the theater, Konstantin (Frank Langella) has written an experimental play with the lead to be acted by his beloved, Nina (Blythe Danner). He arranges the first performance to take place at a country estate, but the presence of his self-absorbed mother (Lee Grant) and her novelist lover disrupts the production.

Adapted from Arthur Miller's play, film focuses on a group of Frenchmen who are detained at Vichy, the capital of France while under Nazi occupation, and "investigated" under suspicion of secretly being Jewish.

James Earl Jones delivers a riveting performance as paranoid patriarch King Lear, an aging monarch who insists that his three daughters prove their love for him, only to learn he's exalted the two who seek to destroy him. This live performance recording of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival production deftly envisions the bard's haunting tragedy with a fine supporting cast, including Raul Julia, Paul Sorvino and Rene Auberjonois.

Henry Flipper is the first black West Point graduate. Assigned to serve at Fort Davis in Texas, Flipper becomes the object of a conspiracy by his fellow cadets to rid the base of its only black graduate.

Just before the Salem Witch Trials, an embittered old woman, who has learned witchcraft, teams up with the Devil, and brings a scarecrow to life as part of her diabolical revenge on the judge who was once her lover.

The Last of Mrs. Lincoln depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination.

An affluent suburban couple's empty and gin-fueled lives are observed through the eyes of their neglected, eight-year old daughter.

San Francisco's prize-winning American Conservatory Theater's rowdy commedia dell'arte production incorporates slapstick, pratfall and earthy humor into William Shakespeare's comedy about the two unmarried daughters of a wealthy Italian merchant. While daughter Bianca is genteel and popular, daughter Kate is foul-tempered and strong-willed. No one dares to marry Kate, until Petruchio arrives in Padua and tries his hand at courtship.

Meryl Streep stars as Alice in this production of Elizabeth Swados' musical, which was adapted from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Based on the acclaimed New York Shakespeare Festival production by Joseph Papp, Alice at the Palace follows Alice's surreal adventures with The Mad Hatter, The March Hare, The Queen of Hearts, and The Cheshire Cat, among many others.

Theodore Hickman, a hardware salesman, makes by-yearly visits to Harry Hope's 1910-era waterfront bar for his periodical drinking binges. But on this visit he has decided to try to save the bar's patrons from their "lying pipe dreams."

Set in Richmond, Virginia in October 1864, tells the story of a Union spy working to seize control of the telegraph office.

This Pirates of Penzance is primarily a historical document, part of the Broadway Theater Archive television series. It presents, with some inevitable, tiny technical shortcomings, a live 1980 performance in Central Park, not the 1983 movie of the same name that also starred Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline. Those who remember that film, which had the benefit of retakes and editing, a lavish production budget, and the spaciousness of a Hollywood studio, may find this video less polished. On its own terms, it is nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable.

Three Irwin Shaw short stories are dramatized. In "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" a young married couple stop for a drink on a Sunday morning in Manhattan, and the conversation turns to the husband's fidelity. "The Monument" centers on the conflict between a popular bartender with a following in an upscale Irish bar in 1938 Manhattan and its owner, who is determined to introduce a more economical whiskey in the establishment over the barkeep's objections. In "The Man Who Married a French Wife" the influential American husband of a French woman is asked by her former lover, a former resistance fighter, to help him escape the country.

Adaptation of Arthur Miller's play.

A writer (made to resemble Russian playwright Anton Chekhov) narrates a collection of his stories, all of which are written in the style of Chekhov.